Abstract
Some of Sir Peter Strawson’s most interesting work has been in connection with the ways in which certain features of natural language differ from the representations of them that are prevalent among formal logicians. The following is a latter-day effort that tends in a similar direction.
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Notes
Some arguments in its favour were sketched in L. Jonathan Cohen, ‘Searle’s Theory of Speech Acts’, Philosophical Review,lxxix, 1970, pp. 547–50. A further development of it was given by Tyler Burge, ‘Reference and Proper Names’, Journal of Philosophy,lxx, 1973, pp. 425–39 and by.1..1. Katz, ’A Proper Theory of Names’, Philosophical Studies,xxxi, 1977, pp. 1–80; but both Burge’s and Katz’s proposals are unsatisfactory in certain respects, which are discussed below.
Cf. ‘On Sense and Reference’, passim, in Translations from the Writings of Gottlob Frege, ed. P. Geach and M. Black, esp. p. 70.
W. V. O. Quine, Word and Object, 1960, p. 179.
M. Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language,1973, p. 142. Cf. also ‘What is a Theory of Meaning?’ in Mind and Language,ed. S. Guttenplan, 1975, p. 132, where Dummett’s argument against Davidson presupposes the validity of the idiosyncratic conception of proper names.
S. A. Kripke, ‘Naming and Necessity’, in Semantics of Natural Language,ed. D. Davidson and G. Harman, 1972, pp. 252 ff.
David Lewis, ‘Truth in Fiction’, Amer. Philos. Quart. V, 1978, p. 39.
This is implicitly denied by S. Kripke, ‘Identityy and Necessity’, in M. K. Munitz, Identity and Individuation,p. 155, where he assumes that a renaming of planets entails a change of language.
Cf. S. Kripke, op. cit., pp. 135
The fallacy here is discussed at greater length, and in relation to other examples, in L. Jonathan Cohen, The Implications of Induction,1970, pp. 211ff.
D. Wiggins, ‘The De Re “Must”: a Note on the Logical Form of Essentialist Claims’ in Truth and Meaning,ed. G. Evans and J. McDowell, 1976, pp. 285 ff., and C. Peacocke, ‘An Appendix to David Wiggins’ “Note”’, ibid., pp. 313 ff.
Op. cit. Burge’s theory is endorsed by J. Hornsby, ‘Singular Terms in Contexts of Propositional Attitude’, Mind, lxxxvi, 1977, p. 42, and criticized (from another point of view than mine) by S. E. Boer, ‘Proper Names as Predicates’, Philosophical Studies, 27, 1975, pp. 389–400
In its original, now obsolete sense, the English verb to demonstrate meant to point out or indicate.
His treatment of ordinary demonstratives makes no mention of it: cf. T. Burge, ‘Demonstrative Construction, Reference and Truth’,Journal of Philosophy,lxxi, 1974, pp. 205 ff.
This usage has a paragraph to itself in the Oxford English Dictionary(Compact edition, 1971, vol. i, p. 1269).
Not that there are not other kinds of English word of which it seems more appropriate to say, as Burge says of proper names, that usage A is just an indexicalization of usage B, rather than that usage B is just a deindexicalization of usage A. The names for days of the week are a typical example, as in (usage A) He will arrive on Sunday,as distinct from (usage B) Sundays are sacred.
e.g. M. Devitt, ‘Singular Terms’,Journal of philosophy, lxxi, 1974, p. 188.
J. J. Katz, ‘A Proper Theory of Names’, Philosophical Studies,xxxi, 1977, pp. 1–80, has a linguistic token-reflexive theory of proper names, but spoils it by identifying the actual reference of a proper name’s utterance with its intended reference.
On the difference between these two senses of refer, see further L. Jonathan Cohen, ‘What is the ability to refer to things, as a constituent of a language-speaker’s competence?’, in R. Jakobson et al., Linguaggi nella Società e nella Tecnica,1970, pp. 259 ff.
This is obviously too big a claim to be defended here. But so far as perceptual knowledge is concerned cf. L. Jonathan Cohen, `The Causal Theory of Perception’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,Supp. Vol. li, 1977 pp. 127 ff.; and so far as non-perceptual knowledge is concerned this seems the only way to account for the knowledge of the examinee who mistakenly thinks that he is only guessing.
e.g. G. Evans, ‘The Causal Theory of Names’, Proc. Arist. Soc., Supp. Vol. xlvii, 1973, p. 202.
cf. L. Jonathan Cohen, The Diversity of Meaning, 1962, pp. 38 ff. The issue is investigated in detail in D. K. Lewis, Convention: A Philosophical Study, 1969.
Reference and Proper Names’, Journal of Philosophy,lxx, 1973, p. 433. I am accepting for present purposes the general framework of truth-conditional semantics, as a way of talking about meanings in natural language, though in a more extended discussion this acceptance would have to be subject to some important qualifications.
A similar criticism may be made of the analysis of demonstratives suggested by D. Davidson, ‘Truth and Meaning’, Synthese,17, 1967, pp.310–20, where Davidson claims that That book was stolen is true as (potentially) spoken by p at t if and only if the book demonstrated by p at t is stolen prior to t. A minor fault in Davidson’s analysis is that according to it someone can know the semantics of English, in terms of the appropriate T-sentences, without knowing any relevant difference between this and that.
Exact translation of a proper name, from one language to another, may thus be rendered rather difficult. But in any case it is only by a rather crude convention that we assume the Stagirite to have been given the name Aristotle rather than its Greek original, which was a different speech-form and therefore a different name. The crudity of this convention generates serious problems for the analysis of indirect discourse, which are interestingly discussed in Saul Kripke, ‘A Puzzle about Belief’, in Meaning and Use,ed. A. Margalit (1979),pp. 239–83.
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Cohen, L.J. (2002). The Individuation of Proper Names. In: Knowledge and Language. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 227. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2020-5_10
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